Council got to start lobbing budget questions at staff and adding their own tweaks to the process on Tuesday night.
City manager Patrick Draper ran through an extensive budget presentation, after which council passed a few budget-related motions.
While motions to accept staff recommendations to refer the budget and the proposed utility rate increase to the committee of the whole were passed unanimously, another set of three recommendations saw some dissention.
Mayor Nolan Crouse voted against a motion that asked the committee of the whole to consider the 2014 base budget, including four related business cases, be set at $128.8-million and funded from a 2.1 per cent property tax increase.
A motion for that committee to consider funding new growth business cases from the expected 2.75 per cent in new assessment growth, estimated to be worth $2.1-million, and transfer any surplus revenue from that new assessment growth to general reserves was passed with all but Crouse voting in favour.
A third motion asking the committee to consider the 2014 municipal growth capital budget of $12-million and the 2014 utility growth capital budget of $170,000 was passed with all but Crouse and Coun. Sheena Hughes voting in favour.
“We’re getting a little bogged down in the wording if I’m not mistaken,” said Coun. Tim Osborne about debate over language considerations in one of the motions.
The motions do not approve the budget but instead refer it to council’s committee of the whole – which is a more informal gathering of the councillors and mayor – for consideration.
Council started to ask questions but did not begin to debate the budget.
“Tonight we’ll just stick with the high level questions,” Crouse said.
Those high level questions from council included council taking issue with the cities used as comparison points for spending and staffing levels, inquiries about municipal sustainability initiative funding and questions about other grants and requests for project charters.
Council’s in-depth budget deliberations are set to start Nov. 26. A full schedule of the meetings is available online at www.stalbert.ca/budget2014.
